Reporters on the presidential campaign trail in South Carolina this week found themselves in the middle of a much different national story when a white man opened fired in a historic black church in Charleston, killing nine people including a state senator.
Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton had made a speech on Wednesday in North Charleston just hours before the attack. Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) ended up canceling his campaign plans scheduled for Thursday in South Carolina.
“I was there for Jeb’s Thursday event, others were there for Hillary Clinton’s Wednesday event,” MSNBC’s Benjy Sarlin told TPM in an email on Thursday.
Sarlin, a TPM alum, ended up live-tweeting and reporting developments in the shooting and its aftermath, hustling from the site of the attack at Emanuel AME Church to police briefings, with television appearance in between.
He was joined by his colleagues, NBC’s senior White House correspondent Chris Jansing and reporter Anthony Terrell.
Also in town for Bush was Washington Post’s Robert Costa, who told TPM that he had arrived to cover the GOP candidate’s remarks at a veterans town hall meeting at the Charleston Maritime Center.
Other journalists, like National Journal’s Shane Goldmacher, had been covering Clinton, too. She left South Carolina after giving a speech on youth unemployment in North Charleston.
At an earlier event that day, Clinton also brought up the death of Walter Scott, an unarmed black man who was shot and killed by a white police officer in North Charleston. The officer has since been charged with murder.
Like Sarlin, Costa and the rest, Goldmacher updated readers on the shooting via Twitter, tweeting photos and reports from the ground.
A fleet of TV anchors are now making their way to Charleston, according to CNN’s Brian Stelter. Among them is NBC’s Savannah Guthrie, filling in at “The Nightly News” this week with Brian Williams’ replacement Lester Holt on vacation.
And, at the fringe of the media circle lay figures like former Fox News man Glenn Beck, who has announced that will be heading down to South Carolina flanked by Alveda King, who is a Fox News contributor as well as the niece of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
“I don’t have the details yet. But I want you to join me,” Beck tweeted on Thursday.
Just goes to show…a reporter is always a reporter and sometimes the story finds them, even if its not the one they are in pursuit of…great job by Benjy…I was watching last night as it happened.